X-Files mythology, TenThirteen Interviews Database, and more

Archive for 2000

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Oct
01
2000

Cinefantastique: The Man Behind The Mytharc

Oct-??-2000
Cinefantastique
The Man Behind The Mytharc
Dan Persons

Where’s the profit in knowing that the sinister and the strange daily walk our streets, when it seems that The X-Files – the show that poked at our paranoias, that visualized our national apprehensions, that defined cutting-edge horror for the better part of a decade – has finally reached the end of its own, recently tortured lifespan?

In the reality of television broadcasting, The X-Files has dodged the cancellation bullet one more time, finding itself renewed for an eighth season. In terms of the all holy mythos, though, fans had to wonder at what cost Chris Carter’s brainchild had received its reprieve. Was this actually a new lease on life, or just a dwindling survival on life support, spurred by a network whose proprietors were all-too-aware of how they had botched the previous season? Could the creators and principals of the best genre show on television overcome internecine conflicts and hardening of the arteries to push this final season to heights not previously achieved, or would those tuning in be confronted with vague hints the show’s prior glory?

Those were questions that avid viewers really wanted to know. You’d sooner get the correct time from the Cigarette Smoking Man.

Talking to Chris Carter, at the end of 1999 was a cordial, but cautious, experience. He should hardly be blamed – in what for him should have been a triumphant autumn, the executive producer had instead seen his carefully conceived words dismantled by strife and incompetence. The problems had actually started last summer, when X-Files star David Duchovny filed suit against 20th Century-Fox, charging them with selling reruns of the show to the Fox-held FX network for much less than what the episodes would have brought in open syndication, thus cheating the actor out of his rightfully earned share of the profits. While Carter was not named as a defendant – Duchovny is ballsy, not crazy – the executive producer was cited as an accomplice in the deal, willing to sell his profit-partners down the river in return for favorable treatment for his future shows.

If such was actually the case, then Carter should have checked the fine print a little more closely. On the decision of Fox Entertainment president Doug Herzog – a man who would be out the door scant months later – the network through the bulk of its autumn ’99 promotional might behind ACTION, a funny, edgy satire of current-day Hollywood that, it turned out, nobody on Earth wanted to watch. Forsaken in the push was Harsh Realm, Carter’s new attempt to bring X-Files-style darkness into the virtual reality world. The miscalculation was epic: by November, all of Fox’s fall debuts had been canceled, Harsh Realm included.

Carter did not mince words when asked if Fox had jumped the gun in cutting life-support on Harsh Realm: “Yes,” was his terse reply. Asked about the emotional impact of the cancellation, he became more voluble: “There were a lot of people invested in it, a lot of my friends here, whom I work with, a lot of people who had been giving a tremendous amount of attention and energy to it. For it to be so summarily and thoughtlessly canceled really just hurt a lot of people. That is something you deal with in ways that no one but people on the inside would know.”

If keeping some things within the production family was Carter’s automatic response to the tragedy, it was no surprise that he’d respond to questions about Duchovny’s litigious revolt with similar caution: “I’m not going to talk about the lawsuit, because I’ve been asked not to. But along with the creative aspect of the job, there’s a business aspect of the job. This was about business, and the business is often-competing interests.”

Was it easy, though, to set aside those interests when Carter had to face his recalcitrant star on the soundstage? “We have not had words, if that’s what you mean.”

Maybe not – whatever kind of diva Duchovny may turn out to be, not witnesses have stepped forward to claim he ever brought his business problems to the set. Still, with “The Sixth Extinction,” the season opener of The X-Files’ seventh season, one had to wonder whether the actor wasn’t paying some sort of on-screen price for his legal hubris. Picking up from “Biogenesis,” the prior season’s cliff hanging final episode, “The Sixth Extinction,” offered us a Mulder reduced to a comatose state, and maintained in that condition for the bulk of the hour. Looking close into Duchovny’s glazed stare, one could imagine someone fairly high up the production latter whispering in the actor’s ear, “Is this the way you want to play out your final season?” The perplexities only doubled in the following week’s “Amor Fati,” a script credited to both Carter and Duchovny. In a scenario that recapitulated the finale of Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, we got a Mulder wishing for any path other than the one his life had taken, and an operating table crucifixion, complete with high-tech crown of thorns, that heaped on intimations of the agent’s divine status, at least by his own perception, in shovelfuls. Daring, dramatic experiment, or Duchovny’s calculatedly over dramatized retort to his tormentors? Only the authors knew for sure.

Said “Amor Fati” director Michael Watkins about Duchovny’s on-screen vision of martyrdom, “I think David is such a fine writer and such a free mind. Chris has obviously proven that, and David – who did [season six’s baseball-flashback] ‘The Unnatural’ and this – is so free, he’s so gifted. For him to write this, he was totally there with the character. That’s what it took and it was even more enlightening to have the writer be there right at the moment, so that we could really talk about where we were going, and the passion of these moments and these themes…And for poor David, lying on that table with that headgear on, it was extremely uncomfortable – his poor butt was cooking on the lights and [in that] head thing, he couldn’t move. It was sort of ironic, because he wrote himself into this awful position. We had a lot of smiles, though. I really like David and Gillian. I like them a lot.”

While the season opener did add more fuel to the mythos fire – suggesting that aliens were in possession of technologies that could do everything from cure cancer to explain Adam Sandler’s career – it was not immediately clear in what direction the balance of the season would go. “I actually thought this was going to be the year of Scully’s science,” admitted Carter. “That in doing that, there would be many spiritual concerns. Scully’s dilemma is: how do you reconcile faith in God and faith in science? That’s always an interesting question for the writers. I think we’re dealing with that on some levels; we’re actually telling six mythology episodes this season – in those that are dealing not just with Scully’s faith, but with Mulder’s faith as well. It has become somewhat spiritual, but I think what’s more interesting is that we set out to do one thing and then found ourselves being more interested in something else.”

Something else was right, although sometimes “anything else” might have been a more accurate description. The problem was, with one star pretty much admitting his full-bore animosity towards the show and his co-star not far behind in her contempt with the executive producer potentially resenting behind held in orbit around his only, bona-fide hit when, by all rights (and possibly without the network bumbling), he should have already achieved escape velocity with newer, more challenging projects, no one seemed confident enough in The X-Files’ future to declare a clear-cut path for the season.

About the only thing that could be noted this year was a definitive move away from the more humorous tone the show had taken after its sixth season move to California, a season that fans derisively had dubbed, “X-Files Lite.” Observed co-executive producer Vince Gilligan, “Last season we didn’t have any conscious intention to make it lighter, it just sort of wound up that way. I think we heard lot of people saying they missed the old-time scary ones, so we probably tried a little harder this season to make them scarier. Which is not to say we don’t have the occasional lighter one, like ‘The Amazing Maleeni.’ But I think as a whole that we’re not really heading in any specific direction, other than to say we need to find out pretty soon whether or not this is our last season, and that will inform quite a bit.”

Deprived of a clear-cut objective, The X-Files was free to try new directions in story-telling, but also evidenced one of the most telling signs of a show that had outlived its concept: creeping redundancy, “Chimera,” about murder in a mini-Peyton Place, recapitulated the ambiance of last season’s Mulder-goes-suburban “Arcadia,” but without that episode’s subversive tang.

The witty “The Amazing Maleeni,” about a couple of conniving illusionists, not only failed to shake its ties to the classic “Humbug,” but in an overall plot structure that had Mulder and Scully slowly becoming cognizant of their participation in a mechanism greater than could be immediately perceived, also seemed an earthbound reworking of December’s more supernatural “The Goldberg Variations.”

Meanwhile, the strain marks continued to show, with at least seven of the episodes constructed to keep the bantering agents apart (and one, the killer tobacco “Brand X,” even contriving to put Mulder into a coma again), and enough episodes to set at least part in California (including, curiously, Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz’s effective Appalachian-revenge thriller, “Theef”) to make one wonder whether last season’s production move wasn’t finally taking its toll. Both stars have clearly taken more active control in the show’s production, both to their benefit (Duchovny’s self scripted and directed “Hollywood A.D.”) and their detriment (ibid. “”Amor Fati,” and Anderson’s disastrous “all things,” a self-conscious outing in which Scully, hitherto to a devout Catholic, suddenly and inexplicably turns Buddhist). Whatever modifications – star inflicted or otherwise – have occurred to The X-Files characters (and what the hell happened to Mulder’s fondness for skin rags, anyway?), Carter claimed that such changes could only be expected over the span of seven years. “I think Mulder is still a willing participant to any adventure that cannot be explained; he still takes the unpopular side; he still puts it in the face of his superiors. If anything, though, he has worked with a partner who has seen so much that’s he’s not able to get as big a rise out of her as he once did. I think he may seem to be less of the ‘Spooky Mulder’ that she came to know early on. But the aspect of Mulder’s character is still the same in that he wants to believe he is looking for phenomena that cannot be explained and that might expand his perception of reality.”

As for Scully’s ability to remain the skeptic after having been exposed to weekly helpings of aliens, poltergeists, and giant mutated fluke-men, Carter said, “Scully’s a scientist, so she comes to everything scientifically. Even though she sees something that she can’t explain, she thinks it can ultimately be explained. That’s her M.O. and her bias. So while she has seen a lot, she is never going to take anything at face value and say, ‘That is paranormal.’ She will always look for a rational and scientific explanation.”

The season was far from a total wash. Gilligan was responsible for two-engaging envelope-pushers – the monster P.O.V experiment “Hungry” and the reality-TV satire “X-Cops” – and the darkly vivid Monster-of-the-week “Theef.” The mythos two-parter “Sein Und Zeit” and “Closure” took the questionable tactic of trying to explain the JonBenét Ramsey killing in supernatural terms, but also provided an emotionally engaging conclusion to Mulder’s search for his sister Samantha (while, in fine X-Files tradition, raising three new questions for every one that it answered). And the cleverly titled, William B. Davis scripted “En Ami” dared to give us a glimpse at the Cigarette Smoking Man’s humanity, while still keeping his motivations shrouded in clouds of Marlboro smoke. Admitted Carter, “This show is so elastic that it succeeds on so many levels. I think that there is no one episode that is a crystallization of what the show does best, because it always is surprising, even to me, how many things it does well. The fact that we can actually make fun of ourselves and everyone seems to have fun doing it and fun watching it, I think, says a lot about the show, too. It is protean.”

However mutable the series might have been, though, it could’nt accommodate all situations, especially when the decision to move ahead on an eighth season was delayed until the very end of season seven. “We’re still waiting to hear,” Gilligan said in January. “[20th Century-Fox Television and Fox Broadcasting topper] Sandy Grushow said that he thought it was a 50/50 chance at this point. I don’t know what the exact odds are, but I do know for sure it is still up in the air and we are waiting for a final verdict from David Duchovny and Chris Carter.

“We need to find out pretty soon whether or not this is our last season, and that will inform us quite a bit. If it is our last season, we just need to know so we can end the show properly with a great two-part episode or a three-part[er] or something like that. If not our last season, I guess we’re just…we don’t really have…Chris Carter and [executive producer] Frank Spotnitz may have more of a master plan, but I think generally if this is not our last season we’re all basically doing what we always do, which is trying to come up with a good mix of mostly scary and some suspenseful and some lighter episodes, and just keep entertaining our audience.

“You know, it’s a shame: with the original Star Trek, they didn’t know they had been canceled during their hiatus, and they didn’t get a chance to do a final episode, which I guess everybody would have appreciated. I don’t think anyone’s going to let that happen here. If X-Files ends, I can’t imagine it would be because we’re canceled. It would only be because David Duchovny and Chris Carter and Gillian Anderson decided it was time to move onto other things.”

Of course, any vote that incorporated Duchovny’s choice was easy to prognosticate. By April, the actor was talking openly with Entertainment Weekly about how his “Hollywood A.D.” episode would be “my way of saying good-bye,” and speculating on what his life would have been like if The X-Files had backed off the Mulder/Scully interplay and become more an ensemble show (Here’s a hint: “Hi, I’m David Duchovny for 10-10-321…” Jeez, hasn’t the man ever seen The Others?).

Taking no chances, Fox gave Chris Carter the go-ahead to spin The Lone Gunmen – the conspiracy theorists and cyber-geek poster-boys who were rarely seen this season – off into their own series, the pilot being hastily assembled and shot in early spring in Vancouver.

As far as what path an X-Files eighth season might take, no one dared to speculate. “It’s a question we’re always asking ourselves,” admitted Gilligan, who has a contractual commitment with Fox for at least the next season, and who claimed he would be happy to continue on with the show.

“Everyone knows that [Scully and Mulder] have a tremendous respect for one another, certainly a platonic love for one another and they would each lay down their lives for the other. I think that’s the way we like it, that’s the way a lot of the fans like it as well. That could probably blossom into some sort of romantic relationship, but I think we’re also reluctant to push it to that level. Other than that, I don’t really have a great answer for you.”

Carter again minced no words when asked about his intentions to participate in the next X-Files movie: “That’s my plan.” As for moving with the show into season eight, his public stance was initially one of guarded optimism: “I would only do it if I felt that everyone wanted to do it, because I felt that there were plenty of good stories to tell. If everyone felt that they were up to it, I would be excited to continue. I think that anything past year five is difficult for a series, but it’s also where, if you can work in a collaborative and creative way, I think you can find things that you didn’t know where there. I think that we’re at that place, we can continue to be. The other reason would be that there are very few, great television ideas, and something like The X-Files has the ability to generate so many different kinds of stories that you cannot close the door on it just because you can. The show becomes bigger than its parts. If there were more good stories to tell, I think, in a way, it’s only doing justice to continue on.”

But it seemed that, after making that statement, the exec producer took a more careful inventory of the stories remaining to be told and decided hat justice had well been served. Come April, both Carter and Spotnitz had signed up with Miramax genre branch Dimension Films to respectively direct and producer/write Serios, a “true” story about a man able to project his thoughts onto film negative. Why this change of heart? “I have a contract [with Fox] that lasts through the end of this year,” Carter had said in 1999, prior to cutting the deal. “If I didn’t re-up, I probably wouldn’t be giving any attention to the show, but if I do re-up, I will be giving the same amount of attention to the show that I’ve always given to it, because I don’t want it to be anything other than what it could potentially be.” In light of ensuing events, it well appeared that Carter had made his own decision about his continuing involvement in the future of The X-Files.

As with all things X-Files, Carter now faces a daunting puzzle: how to devote time and attention to a major, feature film project while “giving the same amount of attention” to the show that placed his name on the media map.

Meanwhile, for the public’s sake, it was all smiles from the series’ principals as the show received the eighth season go-ahead. Duchovny, who just prior to renewal was seen looking bored on the all-star edition of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire (and who wound up taking home less money for his agonies than either Rosie O’Donnell or Ray Romano), told the press, ” I am pleased we were able to come to an agreement that enables me to remain part of The X-Files…I’m looking forward to going back to work.” Getting a salary raise to a reported $350,000-$400,000, and having his suit settled out of court no doubt helped.

But one had to wonder exactly how much Duchovny relished a return to the world of the sinister and the weird when part of his agreement dictated a lighter workload in the upcoming season. The result of that handy codicil: No one should expect Mulder’s prompt return from the alien fueled joy-ride that scooped him up at the end of “Requiem,” the seventh season closer.

With Mulder M.I.A (probably to some beach in the south of France), Scully in a family way (having apparently being knocked up while doing the stop-motion Macarena in an Oregon forest – did Anderson ask for some off-time as well?) and the Cigarette Smoking Man apparently passed on (though you can never keep a good creep down), it’s anybody’s guess who will be fit enough to pick up on the story come fall. Skinner? C’mon, do you really want to watch sixty minutes of paperwork? Krycek? An interesting alternative – his reformation is being hinted at, but ibid. the parenthetical for CSM.

The Lone Gunmen? Oops, sorry, they’ve got their own show to worry about that. No, The X-Files world is now filled with people who, through either contractual or other obligations, are too preoccupied to carry on work started seven years ago. It’s an ironic counterpoint to the questions posed at the beginning: the truth may still be out there, but there may be no one left to discover it.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Interviews: Press | 3 Comments »

Oct
01
2000

Horroronline: Chris Carter Interview

Oct-??-2000
Horroronline
Chris Carter Interview
Ian Spelling

[typed by Alfornos]

“I think that when we get to the musical X-Files,” Chris Carter opines, “it will be over my dead body.”

Fortunately, matters aren’t that grave yet over at The X-Files, which begins its eighth season on November 5. It does so after a fairly decent seventh year that was arguably more memorable for its behind-the-scenes intrigue – Would the show return? Would David Duchovny come back? Would Carter or Gillian Anderson return if Duchovny didn’t? – than for the episodes themselves. And it does so, after the dust settled, with a great deal of promise. Duchovny signed on for a limited number of episodes. Carter inked a one-year deal and Anderson agreed to stay on for a ninth year. Adding to the sense of renewal, Carter and company tapped Robert Patrick – of Terminator 2 and The Sopranos – to partner with Anderson on the show as the search for Mulder (Duchovny) builds to a crescendo following his abduction by aliens and Scully’s (Anderson) post-abduction blockbuster revelation to Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) that she’s pregnant.

“Fox asked me very late in the season last year to do the show (for another year) and I said to them, “I really just don’t want to do this as a matter of commerce,'” Carter recalls. “I wanted it to be a good show. I wanted it to be special. I want this to be a great season of The X-Files. I want the event of Mulder’s disappearance to be an important event. I want the possibility that the show could go on. I wanted it to go on for all the right reasons. And there were business considerations because there was a lawsuit (filed by Duchovny, who sought a larger piece of the syndication money pie). There were business considerations because there are always business considerations when people don’t have contracts. So the reason the show is still on the air is that there were people that wanted to do it and still felt they could make it good. And that’s really the reason.”

So what happens in season eight? How is Patrick’s character, Agent John Doggett, woven into the fabric of the show? “Doggett is brought in to head up the investigation into Mulder’s disappearance,” says Carter, who had auditioned Patrick for the D.B. Sweeny role in the short-lived Harsh Realm and tapped Patrick for Doggett over the likes of Lou Diamond Phillips and Bruce Campbell. “He is an FBI agent and he was a (New York City) cop, and that’s actually not atypical for FBI agents. He is not assigned to the X-Files to begin with. He is not Scully’s (Anderson) partner to begin with. There is a gradual, hopefully realistic integration of the character into the series. He’s a skeptic. Unlike Scully, who really had science (on her side), Doggett comes at it as kind of a knee-jerk skeptic. He’s a person who is doubting by nature and he really is one of these people who needs to see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, in order to believe it. As simple as that sounds, hopefully we can make him a nice, complex character.

“When Mulder comes back to the show, that will be the interesting dynamic. How does it work between the three of them? I don’t know necessarily that it will be competitive (between Mulder and Doggett). In fact, it might be a symbiotic relationship. These are things we have to explore and, certainly, we look forward to exploring Scully and Doggett through the first half of the season. We’re not constructing the show for David and for David’s disappearance. I could have used him more and I could have used him less, to be honest. So, really, I’ve got to make it interesting for the audience and for myself and then, ultimately, make it interesting for the actors, too.”

Looking to the future, Carter expects The X-Files to return to the kinds of scary stand-alone episodes that made the show a keeper early on. Thus, expect fewer light-hearted episodes and perhaps fewer mythology hours. As for the bigger picture, the long run, it remains to be seen what the future holds for The X-Files. “Well, I don’t have a contract, so I’m right back where I started,” Carter says. “But I think there’s a terrific opportunity to (go beyond season eight) now that Robert Patrick is aboard. It’s really just figuring out how to tell the stories, and who to tell the stories with. David doesn’t have a contract past this year. It really becomes a contractual thing, and I wish it weren’t that way, but that’s the way the business works. It wasn’t a good situation to be in last year. We were writing (the season finale, “Requiem”) and filming the episode and not knowing whether or not we were coming back. Now, whatever happens, I’ll have a chance to plan it out. (Whether or not there’s another season) really depends on us doing good shows this year, making Doggett interesting, introducing new characters. Whether it goes on with David and Gillian, Robert or whomever, I really only want the show to go on if it’s going to be good.”

###

Season 8 Preview

The truth is out there…for at least one more season.

After last year’s season finale fans of The X-Files were left to wonder if the show would return, and that had nothing to do with the final episode. David Duchovony was embroiled in a bitter lawsuit with Fox and didn’t appear he’d be back. Gillian Anderson was contracted for another year, but what would The X-Files be without Mulder? Well we’re going to find out, sort of.

Duchovny came to terms with FOX and signed on for 11 out of the 22 eighth-season episodes, a development that prompted series creator/boss Chris Carter to make up the difference by casting Robert (Terminator 2) Patrick as FBI Agent John Doggett. New characters and missing mainstays make this the most unpredictable season to date.

With the quasi-departure of Mulder, it falls to Scully, the natural skeptic, to find the truth. Doggett, a no nonsense, career-minded guy, will help after initially being in charge of locating Mulder. Look for Scully and her new partner to rub each other the wrong way right off the bat. Scully’s skepticism was always rooted in science; Doggett just doesn’t believe. After all Scully’s been through, like it or not, she’s a believer, but Doggett is cut from the “have to see it to believe it” cloth. It should be interesting to watch how Scully deals with the ambitious Doggett, who’s suddenly surrounded by paranormal investigations. Clearly, we’re in for a different kind of dynamic between the show’s main characters – and that’s not even factoring in the rebellious, often flighty Mulder.

Beyond the addition of Doggett, expect minor characters to grab more screen time. A.D. Walter Skinner, played by Mitch Pileggi, will become deeply involved in the X-Files after witnessing Mulder’s abduction last spring. Skinner’s attitude toward the paranormal will be more open since his close encounter last year. Newly appointed Deputy Director Kersh, played by James Pickens Jr., will spearhead tension at the Bureau between Scully, Skinner and Doggett. It’s Kersh who assigns Doggett to the X-Files as a smack in the face, to put him in his place, to reduce the threat that Doggett could one day vie for his chair. Then there’s Gibson Praise (Jeff Gulka), the young clairvoyant genius introduced in season 5. Expect to learn more about his alien physiology and origins.

If Cigarette Smoking Man really took his last puff in the season finale, count on others to start some trouble. Most likely we’ll see Krycek, played by Nicholas Lea, and Marita Covarrubias, played by Laurie Holden, become a little more active. And just because Bill Davis isn’t signed to a contract, that doesn’t mean CSM won’t be back. I’m pretty sure we’ll see those nicotine stained fingers again in the shadows.

Further, X-philes can look forward to more day-to-day activity from Chris Carter. For the first time in years, Carter’s plate is rather clean. Millennium is long gone and Harsh Realm barely hit the radar. So, until the Lone Gunmen spin-off really gets going, Carter will assume more creative control of the golden goose that got him started. As a result, expect the show to return to its roots with more one-shots and horror themed episodes, as well as fewer comedy-driven hours or gimmicky episodes. The search for Mulder will run throughout the season and, yes, he does show up in the season premiere, albeit briefly. By episode two, though, he and Doggett will have an explosive encounter to get things started and questions flying.

The truth used to be about alien invasions and paranormal occurrences. Going into season eight the truth is about very different subject matter. Can the X-Files reinvent itself after seven seasons? Will Robert Patrick be accepted by the hard-core X-Files fans or rejected by Mulder lovers everywhere? Can bulking up minor characters make up for a part-time Duchovny? The truth is out there, but just like every other X-File mystery: you’ll just have to wait to find it.

Tags: ,
Posted in Interviews: Press | No Comments »

Oct
01
2000

The X-Files Magazine: The Next Files

Oct-??-2000
The X-Files Magazine [US]
The Next Files

It’s really a different show than it’s been in the past seven years because the characters of Mulder and Scully so much defined the way every episode unfolded. And now when you take Mulder out and put in this other character, it changes everything.~ Frank Spotnitz

With a new lead character and reconfigures series’ dynamic to consider, you can bet The X-Files’ executive producer Frank Spotnitz is pretty preoccupied these days. As usual, he was still gracious enough to take the time to explain what the summer’s many developments mean for our beloved show.

Official Magazine What do all the changes mean for The X-Files?

Frank Spotnitz The series is really redefined by Mulder’s absence and by the addition of Robert Patrick’s character John Doggett. It’s really a different show than it’s been in the past seven years because the characters of Mulder and Scully so much defined the way every episode unfolded. And now when you take Mulder out and put in this other character, it changes everything. So, it’s been challenging. But it’s certainly been a welcome change of pace after years of doing the show one way. Doggett is really a guy’s guy, somebody who’s got a very successful career at the FBI, former cop. Smart, self-made man. Really different from Mulder and Mulder’s background. And we wanted to do that very deliberately to bring a fresh voice into The X-Files. How we worked with Scully and how Scully would work without Mulder was quite a puzzle. It doesn’t feel natural that Scully would suddenly jump into the Mulder role now that Mulder’s gone. That just isn’t who she is. And even though she’s come an incredibly long way in the past seven years and seen a lot of things and had her skepticism challenged, she isn’t gonna just become Mulder overnight just because he’s not there. And yet she is leading this unit and leading the investigations into the cases. And Doggett finds himself playing the role that Scully used to play. No episode in the season will be like the one that precedes it. It’s like the partnership is evolving from week to week, and we’re finding out as we write the scripts.

Official Magazine Can you clarify David Duchovny’s involvement this season?

Frank Spotnitz There’s a certain number of days he’s available in the first half of the season, and then there’s a certain number of episodes he’s available in the back half of the season. And it’s gonna depend on the stories we tell how many episodes at the end of the day it’ll actually be. I think 11 is kind of the maximum number he might indeed appear in, but there’s a good chance it will be less. I’m not sure how it will work out best for the stories we’re telling. I don’t think [he’s] likely to [direct] this year only because he is available to us in such a limited fashion, and when he’s directed in the past we’ve had to sacrifice use of him as an actor in order to allow him to direct. It’s kind of a similar problem for [Gillian]. We need her more than ever, and to make time out for her to direct and write would be difficult given how much we need her as an actress this year. [And] she has some personal commitments that have to come first in her life, and we’re doing our best to honor those.

Official Magazine What will happen to the mythology without Mulder?

Frank Spotnitz If you look back on the first season of The X-Files, there were episodes you could call mythology episodes, but really the mythology of the show did not begin until Gillian Anderson got pregnant and they had to write in the abduction storyline for Scully. And now, the mythology has been reinvented and restarted by having to write in the abduction storyline for David because of David’s contract. So, off-screen issues forced the mythology to really get started in Season Two and again to be reinvented in Season Eight. And it’s really a new ballgame. It really is like a fresh slate. I think you will see the characters of Krycek and Covarrubias, but they are very much a part of Mulder’s world. So, I think we’ll see them after Christmas in the back half of the season.

Official Magazine Is the CSM really dead?

Frank Spotnitz this is the first time in eight years where William B. Davis has not been under contract to The X-Files. There were other seasons where we thought he was dead, but he was always under contract, we always had a deal with him. And we no longer do.

Official Magazine What can you reveal about Scully’s baby?

Frank Spotnitz She is pregnant, we will deal with the pregnancy, but you’re not going to see it every week, every episode. It’s not gonna be something we dramatize. Trust me, off screen she’s thinking about it, but it doesn’t always work in all of these stories that have Scully, especially since it’s a secret that only Skinner knows about. It’s not something you can expect to see her dealing with every week, at least in the first half of the season.

Official Magazine What are your hopes for this season?

Frank Spotnitz Well, to be honest, I was unsure whether it was wise to even go forward with this season, and the decision was really not mine. It’s one that other people made. And having embarked upon this season, I want it to be vindicated creatively. I want people to understand that creatively, it was a good thing to do. I want to reinvent the series for the character of John Doggett. I want that character to be rewarded with the full potential that I know that character and actor possess. And so, if at the end of this season, we created a character that people like and are interested in, then I’ll feel like the year’s been a success, whether it’s the last year of the series or not. And I think there’s a chance that it won’t be the last year of the series, if that character is as successful as I know he can be.

Official Magazine Aside from Chris Carter’s bat-man tale, what stories can we look forward to?

Frank Spotnitz Vince Gilligan is writing a story that’s about a very strange community in the middle of nowhere and Scully gets stranded there, and the locals have a terrible and weird secret that she doesn’t [seem to be able to] penetrate. It’s a great, paranoid and scary, isolated story that’s very much centered on the character of Scully. David Amman has a story about a boy who comes back from the past unchanged and he’s got a secret about what’s happened in the past 10 years, and it’s about Scully and Doggett trying to understand this little boy’s secret. Greg Walker’s got a story about a woman who is saved from a murder and believes she has a guardian angel who’s watching over her shoulder protecting her. But she’s wrong. It’s not what it seems to be at all. And Jeff Bell is working on a story about a man who is seemingly indestructible

Tags: , ,
Posted in Interviews: Official Magazine (US) | 1 Comment »

Sep
22
2000

Entertainment Weekly: 'The X-Files': Fighting the Future

Sep-22-2000
Entertainment Weekly
‘The X-Files’: Fighting the Future
Mike Flaherty

[Original article here]

Robert Patrick will take David Duchovny’s spot on the Chris Carter sci-fi show

They appear like sentries every hundred yards or so on the dusty, winding back roads of Southern California’s Ventura Farms. Pink Day-Glo signs, stapled to telephone poles and trees, bearing one word: ”Patience.” A five-minute drive to the end of the line reveals this to be the title of an upcoming X-Files episode, the placards showing the way to a suitably eerie wooded lakeside, where a crew is lensing a few location scenes. But they might as well be advisory signposts, their message a watchword for X‘s upcoming season, which holds an uncertain future for the Emmy-winning drama, its reeling network, and, most of all, a legion of leery fans.

Much like some of the less fortunate creatures who have populated its paranormal tales, The X-Files enters the 2000-01 campaign a mutant, largely due to the phasing out of beloved costar David Duchovny and the attempt to fill his sizable gumshoes with journeyman character actor Robert Patrick. Patrick will star as FBI agent John Doggett, a hard-nosed career climber charged with leading the search for Duchovny’s Agent Fox Mulder (abducted by aliens in last season’s finale), but who could very well come to — gasp! — replace him as the gun-toting, flashlight-waving partner to Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully.

”I hope you write some nice things about me that will help win over the fans,” says Patrick, ”’cause I’d kind of like to help keep the show going, you know?” That’s not just Southern-fried humility coming from the Georgia native; it’s an acknowledgment of the extreme skepticism the actor faces from the show’s more, um, custodial supporters. ”I don’t expect the fans will like him right off the bat, because Scully certainly doesn’t,” says executive producer Frank Spotnitz. ”David is a terrific actor with a huge amount of charisma, so no matter who you put in there, some segment of the audience is going to be hostile.”

Mulder and Scully, Scully and Mulder — they go together like plausible and deniability. And certainly with the show’s more passionate followers, Patrick runs the risk of joining Bewitched replacement Dick Sargent in the annals of TV infamy. On the other hand, it might just help make a name for him other than ”that Terminator 2 guy.” Despite a tragicomic arc last season as a sicko gambler on The Sopranos and a résumé boasting 55 feature films, the 41-year-old actor has yet to escape his most infamous role as a cyborgian assassin in the 1991 Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster. ”A character like that is great because it gives you a career,” says Patrick, who lives in L.A. with his wife, Barbara, their daughter, Austin, and newborn son, Samuel. ”But it’s also like this thing.”

Ironically, Patrick’s emergence on The X-Files is largely due to Duchovny feeling that very same way — about Mulder. So Patrick could be trading one straitjacket for another — not that he or his new colleagues are complaining. ”There were a lot of actors who were suggested to us, but not a lot who fit the character we were writing,” says X creator Chris Carter, ”which was this hard-boiled cop, salt-of-the-earth Everyman, who was going to be a nonbeliever to the core.”

Not surprisingly, the Hollywood trades spent the spring abuzz with casting scuttlebutt. Among the actors who vied for the gig: Hart Bochner (Apartment Zero), Lou Diamond Phillips (Courage Under Fire), Bruce Campbell (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.), Gary Cole (American Gothic), and D.B. Sweeney, costar of Carter’s short-lived Fox actioner Harsh Realm. None, according to Carter, communicated Doggett’s blue-collar essence like Patrick; the steely-eyed actor imbues his FBI agent with a Dirty Harry-esque sense of righteous menace. As stand-up as Mulder is flaky, this G-man is not likely to be seen thumbing through Adult Video News or traipsing off to Graceland for a kitschy holiday. ”There’s heat,” says Carter, who remembered Patrick from a 1999 casting meeting for Realm (coincidentally, the actor’s brother Richard Patrick plays guitar with Filter, a band that has contributed music to Files as well as to the 1998 feature film, Fight the Future). ”Robert’s got a very masculine quality.”

Heat. Masculine. Just what’s being implied here? ”David’s and my chemistry has been a topic of conversation for a long period of time, and it’s valid and tangible, and so is the chemistry between Robert and me, thank God,” says Anderson, whose Scully will now be the show’s resident believer. ”I hope that people can open their minds enough to allow a natural progression to take place.”

Anderson is convinced that, like her character, fans will come to appreciate ”the way Doggett is protective of Scully, the way that he respects her journey, the way that he is mindful of her relationship with Mulder. We were fortunate enough to get an actor who knows exactly how to play that.”

Mulder’s abduction? Scully’s pregnancy? Cancer Man’s could-be death? Those revelations from last spring’s season finale were nothing compared with the truly scary real-life X-Files cliff-hanger: whether Duchovny would return for another year. Carter, who at the time had not signed on for season 8, balked at the idea of continuing without Duchovny. The show’s producer, Twentieth Century Fox, and its affiliated network Fox were within their rights to keep the show on the air without its mastermind or marquee costar, but, as Carter understates, ”it would have been very hard for them.”

Finally, on May 17, a mere day before Fox was to unveil its fall lineup to potential advertisers, Duchovny agreed to a limited role in X‘s eighth season (he’ll appear in 11 of 22 episodes — the first two, the last six, and three more in between, and not always in a lead capacity); his salary renegotiations plus the settlement of his lawsuit will reportedly total nearly $30 million. (The suit alleged that Fox had forged a sweetheart deal wherein X-Files reruns were sold to Fox’s cable outlet, FX, rather than offered up for competitive bidding, thereby depriving Duchovny of millions in syndication profits.) ”The lawsuit created a certain amount of rancor,” says Carter, who nonetheless tied his own return to the show to Duchovny’s. ”Right down to the end, I was saying ‘I don’t want to do this without David,’ and finally everybody figured out a way to do it with him.”

Carter claims that in Fox’s negotiations with Duchovny, and subsequently with himself and Anderson, the network was ”incentivized” by the fear of airing a compromised version of its popular series. Though X‘s ratings have fallen off 26 percent in the last three seasons, it’s still Fox’s highest-rated drama and a perennial cash cow for both the network and the studio. Compounding the network’s woes was a dismal 1999-2000 season that yielded a solitary hit (Malcolm in the Middle), the end of two signature dramas (Beverly Hills, 90210 and Party of Five), and diminishing returns from its other hour-long hit, Ally McBeal. The words over a barrel come to mind. ”We are obviously in a building phase,” concedes the network’s new entertainment president, Gail Berman. ”We don’t have the next X-Files yet, so getting the show back is a tremendous asset for the company.”

But the network was not without its own negotiating gambits. ”There was a lot of leveraging going on,” says Anderson, who admits that while Fox’s need to deal was a ”huge” factor in the talks, she had to make a significant concession herself — signing on for a ninth year with the show — as a trade-off for a salary jump that would amount to ”fair compensation.” ”Because they have me on contract for this year,” she adds, ”I basically had no bargaining chip unless I agreed to do the next one.”

Why bargain at all? The truth is in Duchovny’s lucrative deal. ”There was a gulf for five years,” says Anderson of the longtime pay disparity between her and Duchovny, ”and then we narrowed the gulf. And then, based on what was being offered for the few episodes that he was doing [this year], we were back in the caveman ages … It was ludicrous.” Anderson will now make between $200,000 and $300,000 an episode.

Still, in light of previous comments Anderson has made (in an October 1999 Access Hollywood interview, she spoke of being ”physically, psychologically … spent,” and said of a then-projected eighth season, ”It would be a big mistake to try and draw it out. It would be great to go out with a modicum of respect”), that she re-upped at all seems an attitude adjustment drastic enough to do any of X‘s morphing villains proud. She attributes those grousings to a long-running ennui on both her and Duchovny’s part. ”David and I kind of settled into a rhythm of just showing up and doing the work,” she says. ”We’d get little bursts of stuff here and there, but it was dragging.” Now, having worked with the fleshed-out Doggett character, she reports, the show ”has got a whole new life.”

And not a moment too soon. With the series’ sprawling conspiracy having wound down over the past couple of seasons and its declining Nielsens, Carter is taking a decidedly hands-on approach to season 8, having written or rewritten five of the season’s first seven episodes, and directed the aforementioned ”Patience.” ”This is the most involved I’ve ever been,” he claims, adding ”I’ve been somewhat facetious about being a prisoner of [the show], but my feeling is, if I’m going to be doing it, I want it to be good, so I work hard.”

Harder, for sure, since for the first time in four seasons, Carter won’t be straddling two fall series, as he had during Millennium‘s three-year run and the canceled Harsh Realm‘s intensive start-up (his next project, X spinoff The Lone Gunmen, doesn’t debut till mid-season). Alluding to the automatic-pilot lethargy — and bloated paychecks — that often characterizes TV series in their autumn years, he notes, ”I didn’t want this to be another year of The X-Files as a matter of commerce. I want to make it interesting for the actors and myself so that the show might go on, that we might, indeed, preserve the movie franchise.”

Back in the woods, Scully and Doggett stand beside the murky lake, interrogating a hermitic old geezer about a series of murders apparently committed by a half-human, half-bat creature. In a rare moment of forthrightness, Carter has admitted that season 8 will mark a return to the show’s horror-driven origins and take a break from the ”comedy” episodes and high-concept flights of fancy like last year’s ”X-COPS” and 1998’s cruise-ship time warp, ”Triangle.” For Spotnitz, that retrenchment bodes well for the series’ second wind: ”As it’s turned out, it’s been more interesting and challenging than it’s been in a long time … You find out more about what the show was, and is, in the process of redesigning it for a new character.”

But while Agents Doggett and Scully will be busy pursuing real and imagined bogeymen, says Carter, ”the search for Mulder kind of informs the whole season.” That quest, however, is also connected to a power struggle within the Bureau, as Assistant Director Kersh (James Pickens Jr.), introduced as a nemesis to Mulder and Scully in season 6, is promoted to deputy director. His first act in his new capacity is to send the ambitious Doggett to the basement, literally as well as figuratively, by saddling him with the X-Files.

In other Bureau-related news, costar Mitch Pileggi will get a promotion of sorts, as his Assistant Director Skinner takes a bigger — and friendlier — interest in the agents’ paranormal exploits in the wake of Mulder’s abduction. ”Having seen what he saw in the season finale, he becomes something of an ally to Scully … an inadvertent believer,” says Carter.

Speaking of the finale, how about Scully’s from-out-of-nowhere pregnancy (the other bombshell dropped in that tumultuous hour)? Although an explanation is promised as to how the ostensibly barren agent was able to conceive in the first place, more troubling are recent, near-blasphemous intimations that Mulder may in fact be … Dad. Spotnitz, who says he and Carter had been pondering the pregnancy idea for a long time, points out that in addition to the agents’ New Year’s kiss in the holiday-themed ”Millennium” episode, we saw Scully wake up not once but twice in Mulder’s apartment last season. ”I’ve always said nothing is impossible on The X-Files, and anything is possible on The X-Files,” Carter concurs.

Maybe so, but that (hypothetical, he says) possibility would be durn near apocalyptic for some fans, as Mulder and Scully’s resiliently chaste romance has been an unspoken point of pride for the show, both in its defiance of television cliché and as an essential part of what’s made the soul mates so quirkily endearing. ”These are two people who have maintained a very powerful and respectful relationship,” says Carter, ”but like all relationships between men and women, sometimes feelings are expressed in a physical way. I don’t think it would be dishonest for them to have done that.” In any event, says Anderson, ”I have confidence, and possibly inner knowledge, that the fans will get to see how Scully got pregnant … before Christmas.”

The season premiere (Nov. 5) takes place the day after the events of last season’s finale, so don’t expect to see a telltale tummy bulge any time soon. Viewers won’t have to wait all that long, however, to see the show’s past come face-to-face with its future, as Doggett will catch up with old ”Spooky” in the season premiere: ”I do run into Mulder, and it’s a confrontation,” says Patrick. ”I have a gun, and I basically tell him I’m going to shoot unless he does what I say. He does — and then he does something un-f—ing-believable.”

Wanna know what? Sorry, you’ll just have to sit back like the rest of us and try a little … patience.

— Additional reporting by Lynette Rice and Ethan Alter

 

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Interviews: Press | No Comments »

Sep
22
2000

Entertainment Weekly: APOCALYPSE HOW? An Update on the State of The X-Files' Tangled Conspiracy

Sep-22-2000
Entertainment Weekly
APOCALYPSE HOW? An Update on the State of The X-Files’ Tangled Conspiracy

The biggest revelation about The X-Files’ labyrinthine “mythology” may be that there are so few revelations left. “People who think there are all these unanswered questions tend not to have seen all the shows,” says executive producer Frank Spotnitz. “If you really have paid attention, most of them have indeed been answered.” Nevertheless, we feel a preseason cram session with Spotnitz and creator Chris Carter is in order. — MF

What questions still remain?

Says Carter: “What the aliens are up to, what their ultimate purpose is, when they’re coming, and what they’re doing now that the conspiracy has broken down. What are their alliances? Is there any involvement with them by humans? Also, what is this other race of aliens [i.e., the renegades with the sewn-up eyes and mouths] up to, and what is their connection with the grays [the dominant alien faction]?”

Are we done with Mulder’s sister Samantha?

“I don’t think as long as Mulder is in the series that you can be truly done with her,” says Spotnitz. But, adds Carter, “I think it’s been pretty much resolved.” Based on last season, she’s in the spirit world now, being guarded by the “walk-ins” (the benevolent spirits who watch over the children who Mulder encounters in the woods in the episode Closure).

But her corporeal body is gone, yes?

“That’s right,” says Carter.

Could Cancer Man still be alive…?

Sure, he was reduced to puffing out of a blowhole in his neck and took a nasty tumble in the finale, but this *is* Cancer Man we’re talking about, and it *was* only a flight of stairs. “We didn’t, in fact, say he was dead,” notes Carter, though Spotnitz points out that actor William B. Davis is no longer officially with the cast: “In previous seasons when we’d killed him, he was always under contract.” Our advice: Don’t rule out a per diem return from the Morley Man.

When last we saw Krycek and Marita Covarrubias, they betrayed Cancer Man. Where will they go from there?

“They’re free agents now,” says Carter, “and they’re not necessarily best friends. [But] I think, depending upon what happens with Cigarette Smoking Man, they will become, in a way, the prime movers in the – maybe – reestablishment of a conspiracy. ” As such, according to Spotnitz, they promise to be a lot more exciting than the good ol’ boys of the bygone Syndicate. “It’s a sexier dynamic because these are young, attractive, vital, dangerous people. We expect to use that to the hilt.”

Gibson Praise, the young brainiac we met in Season 5, returns this year. What’s his story? “He actually has alien physiology, which means that he has something turned on in his brain. Mulder’s experiencing the same thing as a result of his exposure to the black oil,” says Carter, adding “we’ll find [Gibson] in a very unlikely place, but a place that ultimately makes sense. We’re going to explore him and how he came to be.”

And what of the alien’s colonization plan?

“I think we know it’s inevitable now,” says Carter. “The original conspiracy was trying to work with the aliens and at the same time deceive them, to buy time and create the vaccine so that they could be immune to it rather than be enslaved.”

If it’s inevitable, what is there for Scully, Mulder and Doggett to do?

“To get the word out,” says Carter.

So that everyone can just sit around and wait to die?

“Well,” Carter responds, “you’re envisioning Independence Day; I’m envisioning something different…”

Which is?

“I think you’ll have to wait…until season 16.”

Tags: , ,
Posted in Interviews: Press | No Comments »

Sep
22
2000

Entertainment Weekly: Fighting the Future

Sep-22-2000
Entertainment Weekly
Fighting the Future
Mike Flaherty

[typed by alfornos]

Doggett and Scully? X-Files creator Chris Carter and costar Gillian Anderson talk exclusively about the show’s scariest twist yet (losing Mulder), the man who will replace David Duchovny (Robert Patrick), and the spooky doings in season 8.

With Robert Patrick in and David Duchovny (almost) out, The X-Files reinvents itself…and hopes its fans will follow

They appear like sentries every hundred yards or so on the dusty, winding back roads of Southern California’s Ventura Farms. Pink Day-Glo signs, stapled to telephone poles and trees, bearing one word: “Patience.” A five-minute drive to the end of the line reveals this to be the title of an upcoming X-Files episode, the placards showing the way to a suitably eerie wooded lakeside, where a crew is lensing a few location scenes. But they might as well be advisory signposts, their message a watchword for X’s upcoming season, which holds an uncertain future for the Emmy-winning drama, its reeling network, and, most of all, a legion of leery fans.

Much like some of the less fortunate creatures who have populated its paranormal tales, The X-Files enters the 2000-01 campaign a mutant, largely due to the phasing out of beloved costar David Duchovny and the attempt to fill his sizable gumshoes with journeyman character actor Robert Patrick. Patrick will star as FBI agent John Doggett, a hard-nosed career climber charged with leading the search for Duchovny’s Agent Fox Mulder (abducted by aliens in last season’s finale), but who could very well come to – gasp! – replace him as the gun-toting, flashlight-waving partner to Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully.

“I hope you write some nice things about me that will help win over the fans,” says Patrick, “’cause I’d kind of like to help keep the show going, you know?” That’s not just Southern-fried humility coming from the Georgia native; it’s an acknowledgement of the extreme skepticism the actor faces from the show’s more, um, custodial supporters. “I don’t expect the fans will like him right off the bat, because Scully certainly doesn’t,” says executive producer Frank Spotnitz. “David is a terrific actor with a huge amount of charisma, so no matter who you put in there, some segment of the audience is going to be hostile.”

Mulder and Scully, Scully and Mulder – they go together like plausible and deniability. And certainly with the show’s more passionate followers, Patrick runs the risk of joining Bewitched replacement Dick Sargent in the annals of TV infamy. On the other hand, it might just help make a name for him other than “that Terminator 2 guy.” Despite a tragi-comic arc last season as a sicko gambler on The Sopranos and a resume boasting 55 feature films, the 41-year-old actor has yet to escape his most infamous role as a cyborgian assassin in the 1991 Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster. “A character like that is great because it gives you a career,” says Patrick, who lives in LA with his wife, Barbara, their daughter, Austin, and newborn son, Samuel. “But it’s also like this thing.”

Ironically, Patrick’s emergence on The X-Files is largely due to Duchovny feeling that very same way – about Mulder. So Patrick could be trading one straitjacket for another – not that he or his new colleagues are complaining. “There were a lot of actors who were suggested to us, but not a lot who fit the character we were writing,” says X creator Chris Carter, “which was this hard-boiled cop, salt-of-the-earth Everyman, who was going to be a nonbeliever to the core.”

Not surprisingly, the Hollywood trades spent the spring abuzz with casting scuttlebutt. Among the actors who vied for the gig: Hart Bochner (Apartment Zero), Lou Diamond Phillips (Courage Under Fire), Bruce Campbell (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.), Gary Cole (American Gothic), and D.B. Sweeney, costar of Carter’s short-lived Fox actioner Harsh Realm. None, according to Carter, communicated Doggett’s blue-collar essence like Patrick; the steely-eyed actor imbues his FBI agent with a Dirty Harry-esque sense of righteous menace. As stand-up as Mulder is flaky, this G-man is not likely to be seen thumbing through Adult Video News or traipsing off to Graceland for a kitschy holiday. “There’s heat,” says Carter, who remembered Patrick from a 1999 casting meeting for Realm (coincidentally, the actor’s brother Richard Patrick plays guitar with Filter, a band that has contributed music to Files as well as to the 1998 feature film, Fight the Future). “Robert’s got a very masculine quality.”

Heat. Masculine. Just what’s being implied here? “David’s and my chemistry has been a topic of conversation for a long period of time, and it’s valid and tangible, and so is the chemistry between Robert and me, thank God,” says Anderson, whose Scully will now be the show’s resident believer. “I hope that people can open their minds enough to allow a natural progression to take place.”

Anderson is convinced that, like her character, fans will come to appreciate “the way Doggett is protective of Scully, the way that he respects her journey, the way that he is mindful of her relationship with Mulder. We were fortunate enough to get an actor who knows exactly how to play that.”

Mulder’s abduction? Scully’s pregnancy? Cancer Man’s could-be death? Those revelations from last spring’s season finale were nothing compared with the truly scary real-life X-Files cliff-hanger: whether Duchovny would return for another year. Carter, who at the time had not signed on for season 8, balked at the idea of continuing without Duchovny. The show’s producer, Twentieth Century Fox, and its affiliated network Fox were within their rights to keep the show on the air without its mastermind or marquee costar, but, as Carter understates, “it would have been very hard for them.”

Finally, on May 17, a mere day before Fox was to unveil its fall lineup to potential advertisers, Duchovny agreed to a limited role in X’s eighth season (he’ll appear in 11 of 22 [sic] episodes – the first two, the last six, and three more in between, and not always in a lead capacity); his salary renegotiations plus the settlement of his lawsuit will reportedly total nearly $30 million. (The suit alleged that Fox had forged a sweetheart deal wherein X-Files reruns were sold to Fox’s cable outlet, FX, rather than offered up for competitive bidding, thereby depriving Duchovny of millions in syndication profits.) “The lawsuit created a certain amount of rancor,” says Carter, who nonetheless tied his own return to the show to Duchovny’s. “Right down to the end, I was saying ‘I don’t want to do this without David,’ and finally everybody figured out a way to do it with him.”

Carter claims that in Fox’s negotiations with Duchovny, and subsequently with himself and Anderson, the network was “incentivized” by the fear of airing a compromised version of its popular series. Though X’s ratings have fallen off 26 percent in the last three seasons, it’s still Fox’s highest-rated drama and a perennial cash cow for both the network and the studio. Compounding the network’s woes was a dismal 1999-2000 season that yielded a solitary hit (Malcolm in the Middle), the end of two signature dramas (Beverly Hills 90210 and Party of Five), and diminishing returns from its other hour-long hit, Ally McBeal. The words over a barrel come to mind. “We are obviously in a building phase,” concedes the network’s new entertainment president, Gail Berman. “We don’t have the next X-Files yet, so getting the show back is a tremendous asset for the company.”

But the network was not without its own negotiating gambits. “There was a lot of leveraging going on,” says Anderson, who admits that while Fox’s need to deal was a “huge” factor in the talks, she had to make a significant concession herself – signing on for a ninth year with the show – as a trade-off for a salary jump that would amount to “fair compensation.” “Because they have me on contract for this year,” she adds, “I basically had no bargaining chip unless I agreed to do the next one.”

Why bargain at all? The truth is in Duchovny’s lucrative deal. “There was a gulf for five years,” says Anderson of the longtime pay disparity between her and Duchovny, “and then we narrowed the gulf. And then, based on what was being offered for the few episodes that he was doing [this year], we were back in the caveman ages….It was ludicrous.” Anderson will now make between $200,000 and $300,000 an episode.

Still, in light of previous comments Anderson has made (in an October 1999 Access Hollywood interview, she spoke of being “physically, psychologically…spent,” and said of a then-projected eighth season, “It would be a big mistake to try and draw it out. It would be great to go out with a modicum of respect”), that she reupped at all seems an attitude adjustment drastic enough to do any of X’s morphing villains proud. She attributes those grousings to a long-running ennui on both her and Duchovny’s part. “David and I kind of settled into a rhythm of just showing up and doing the work,” she says. “We’d get little bursts of stuff here and there, but it was dragging.” Now, having worked with the fleshed-out Doggett character, she reports, the show “has got a whole new life.”

And not a moment too soon. With the series’ sprawling conspiracy having wound down over the past couple of seasons (see sidebar) and its declining Nielsens, Carter is taking a decidedly hands-on approach to season 8, having written or rewritten five of the season’s first seven episodes, and directed the aforementioned Patience. “This is the most involved I’ve ever been,” he claims, adding “I’ve been somewhat facetious about being a prisoner of [the show], but my feeling is, if I’m going to be doing it, I want it to be good, so I work hard.”

Hard*er*, for sure, since for the first time in four seasons, Carter won’t be straddling two fall series, as he had during Millennium’s three-year run and the canceled Harsh Realm’s intensive start-up (his next project, X spinoff The Lone Gunmen, doesn’t debut till mid-season). Alluding to the automatic-pilot lethargy – and bloated paychecks – that often characterizes TV series in their autumn years, he notes, “I didn’t want this to be another year of The X-Files as a matter of commerce. I want to make it interesting for the actors and myself so that the show might go on, that we might, indeed, preserve the movie franchise.”

Back in the woods, Scully and Doggett stand beside the murky lake, interrogating a hermitic old geezer about a series of murders apparently commited by a half-human, half-bat creature. In a rare moment of forthrightness, Carter has admitted that season 8 will mark a return to the show’s horror-driven origins and take a break from the “comedy” episodes and high-concept flights of fancy like last year’s X-COPS and 1998’s cruise-ship time warp, Triangle. For Spotnitz, that retrenchment bodes well for the series’ second wind: “As it’s turned out, it’s been more interesting and challenging than it’s been in a long time…. You find out more about what the show was, and is, in the process of redesigning it for a new character.”

But while Agents Doggett and Scully will be busy pursuing real and imagined bogeymen, says Carter, “the search for Mulder kind of informs the whole season.” That quest, however, is also connected to a power struggle within the Bureau, as Assistant Director Kersh (James Pickens Jr.) introduced as a nemesis to Mulder and Scully in season 6, is promoted to deputy director. His first act in his new capacity is to send the ambitious Doggett to the basement, literally as well as figuratively, by saddling him with the X-Files.

In other Bureau-related news, costar Mitch Pileggi will get a promotion of sorts, as his Assistant Director Skinner takes a bigger – and friendlier – interest in the agents’ paranormal exploits in the wake of Mulder’s abduction. “Having seen what he saw in the season finale, he becomes something of an ally to Scully…an inadvertent believer,” says Carter.

Speaking of the finale, how about Scully’s from-out-of-nowhere pregnancy (the other bombshell dropped in that tumultuous hour)? Although an explanation is promised as to how the ostensibly barren agent was able to conceive in the first place, more troubling are recent, near-blasphemous intimations that Mulder may in fact be…Dad. Spotnitz, who says he and Carter had been pondering the pregnancy idea for a long time, points out that in addition to the agents’ New Year’s kiss in the holiday-themed Millennium episode, we saw Scully wake up not once but twice in Mulder’s apartment last season. “I’ve always said nothing is impossible on The X-Files, and anything is possible on The X-Files,” Carter concurs.

Maybe so, but that (hypothetical, he says) possibility would be durn near apocalyptic for some fans, as Mulder and Scully’s resiliently chaste romance has been an unspoken point of pride for the show, both in its defiance of television cliche and as an essential part of what’s made the soul mates so quirkily endearing. “These are two people who have maintained a very powerful and respectful relationship,” says Carter, “but like all relationships between men and women, sometimes feelings are expressed in a physical way. I don’t think it would be dishonest for them to have done that.” In any event, says Anderson, “I have confidence, and possibly inner knowledge, that the fans will get to see how Scully got pregnant…before Christmas.”

The season premiere (Nov. 5) takes place the day after the events of last season’s finale, so don’t expect to see a telltale tummy bulge any time soon. Viewers won’t have to wait all that long, however, to see the show’s past come face-to-face with its future, as Doggett will catch up with old Spooky in the season premiere: “I do run into Mulder, and it’s a confrontation,” says Patrick. “I have a gun, and I basically tell him I’m going to shoot unless he does what I say. He does – and then he does something un-f—ing-believable.”

Wanna know what? Sorry, you’ll just have to sit back like the rest of us and try a little…patience.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Interviews: Press | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »